Atari confirms new Star Raiders title

Atari has officially now confirmed that they are going to be reinventing the classic Star Raiders franchise with a new Star Raiders game to be released next year. The game is being developed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC platforms, and currently it is unknown if it will be a digital download offering or retail box release; but the preference is for a digital download release.

Star Raiders was originally developed for the Atari 400/800 computer systems by Doug Neubauer way back in 1979, and a 2600 dubbed down release followed later on. (An Atari 5200 release based on the 400/800 release was also released.) Star Raiders on the 400/800 computers was very advanced and was designed to take advantage of the Atari 400/800 graphics to show off what the system could do in relation to the competitors, who didn’t have anything nearly as good at the time. More than one Atari 400/800 was sold just by seeing Star Raiders.

The new Star Raiders will be developed by Incinerator Games and the studio claims that it will include all of the space dog fighting, tactical battles, and energy management from the original. This promises to be different and will be based on what made Star Raiders great, rather than following the path of other sequels that never quite felt like Star Raiders.

Star Raiders joins Haunted House as the first two titles that are being overhauled from the old Atari days. A rumored Centipede offering is also said to be in development, but Atari has yet to confirm that this is the case. Atari is hopeful that these new reboots of old franchise titles will be successful so that other title releases can be planned. No additional release information was offered for the new Star Raiders title other than it will arrive early next year.